How important is a presidential transition? Turns out, it's pretty important. Not only does a successful one demonstrate the importance of the peaceful hand-over of power between political factions, but also enables a new administration to continue mostly uninterrupted the ongoing work of the federal government to protect its citizens from a myriad of threats, whether climate change, food-borne illness, or destitution. That is why the nominees of both major political parties are required to make plans on how to fill the necessary governmental posts before the outcome of a presidential election is made known, so that no matter who wins, the important services continue to be provided. So what happened with the latest presidential transition? Moneyball author Michael Lewis takes an inside look at the impact of the Trump administration's transition on the federal government in his latest book, The Fifth Risk (2018).
To many Americans, the federal government is an opaque, unwieldy many-armed bureaucratic beast whose successes go largely un-lauded, with the majority of the work done in places where "the cameras never roll," while its failures are widely publicized and politicized (Lewis, 2018, p. 95). Composed of "two million federal employees" overseen by "four thousand political appointees," it admittedly is a sometimes dysfunctional enterprise, with cyclical turnover happening at the end of a president's term not necessarily incentivizing efficiency (Lewis, 2018, p. 37).
Yes, it has faults, but Lewis argues that politics is only a tiny part of the big picture of its continued problems, pointing to the process as being the bigger issue, in who and how a new administration chooses to learn (or not) about the missions of each agency in the critical approximately 75 day period between election and inauguration and beyond. Is the administration choosing to tackle the problem of the "fifth risk," by engaging in long-term planning in response to long-term issues rather than trying to solve them with short-term band-aids (Lewis, 2018, p. 75)?
So, it should be no surprise that the current administration's "drain the swamp" transition did not go at all smoothly, with no concrete plans drawn up and then executed by then President-elect Trump's administration to fill the necessary vacancies or even learn about the work each agency has done. Exhaustive briefings by Obama appointees went unattended for the most part, with few Trump appointees showing up; if they did, they were largely unqualified and uninterested in core agency missions.
To help administrations speed up the process, federal laws have been amended to require only 1,200 positions be confirmed by the Senate. Nevertheless, not even after two and a half years under the current administration have all positions been filled. Today, of 731 top executive positions needing Senate confirmation of nominees, including "cabinet secretaries, deputy and assistant secretaries, chief financial officers, general counsel, heads of agencies, ambassadors and other critical leadership positions," 486 have been filled and 99 have nominees, while 141 posts remain empty with no nominee (Washington Post & Partnership for Public Service, 2019). It almost seems like running the government smoothly isn't a priority and willful ignorance is the rule, not the exception.
What happens when the latter is the case?
By looking at the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and Energy through the stories of earnest public servants, Lewis makes clear that most of the administration's picks slated to fill critical positions in these agencies follows a pattern of short-term self interest that is hampering efforts to identify and make plans in the face of continuing or emerging threats. Publicly accessible data has been going missing on government websites, from information about animal abuse, climate change, and violent crime. Many Trump picks seem more interested in weakening their respective institution in favor of private interests, not knowing or caring for the critical work being done to minimize risk for American citizens on many fronts that the private sector just isn't incentivized to take-up (think the development of experimental vaccines to preventing terrorists from stealing nuclear materials).
For instance, within the Department of Commerce, Trump's appointee to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), whose work includes addressing climate change and national weather forecasting, is Barry Myers, former CEO of private weather company AccuWeather. Myers, whose business relies on government-collected weather data, has been calling for the removal of publicly accessible weather data in favor of charging people for access to that same data. However, Myers has not been officially confirmed.
What then is the way forward? Yes, there are many positions that could be cut in the name of efficiency, a smart approach to make the government more nimble in the face of current threats, many long-term problems of immense scale, like climate change. But to do that, first you need to learn an agency and its functions, promote its programmatic and organizational strengths and minimize its weaknesses, something not high on the Trump administration's list of priorities.
"It's what you fail to imagine that kills you," Lewis warns in the conclusion of The Fifth Risk (Lewis, 2018, p. 219). That's what is troubling about those 141 empty posts, the deliberate ignorance of the existence of tools (personal or technological) to address and solve problems. A problem doesn't just go away if you don't acknowledge its existence. Sooner or later, this attitude tends to come back and bite everyone.
Works Cited:
Lewis, Michael. (2018). The Fifth Risk. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Washington Post, & Partnership for Public Service. (2019). Trump Nominations Tracker: Tracking How Many Key Positions Trump Has Filled So Far. Retrieved August 16, 2019, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-administration-appointee-tracker/database/?noredirect=on.
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